Twelve Seconds of Brave

Sam was a good swimmer.

He could do freestyle and backstroke and a passable breaststroke that his teacher said showed promise. He could swim the full length of the twenty-five-metre pool without stopping, which he'd been practising since before he could write his own name properly.

He was not afraid of the water.

He was afraid of the diving board.

It wasn't the height, exactly. Or the falling. It was the moment between height and falling — that fraction of a second where you were neither on solid ground nor in the water, where you had committed but hadn't arrived, where there was nothing under you and nothing had caught you yet.

That moment was the thing Sam was afraid of.

He stood at the pool's edge after the fourth failed attempt and looked at the board. His towel was around his shoulders. His heart was going too fast for someone who was just standing still.

Maria sat down on the bench beside him. She was his coach — small, quick, with a very direct way of speaking that Sam had learned to trust.

"You want to tell me what happens up there?" she asked.

"I get to the end," said Sam. "I look down. I can't."

"What does 'can't' feel like?"

He thought about this. "Like there's something pushing me back from the inside."

Maria nodded. She looked at the board for a moment.

"Can I tell you something about bravery?" she said.

Sam nodded.

"Most people think bravery means not being afraid. It doesn't. Bravery is being afraid and doing the thing anyway." She paused. "But the other thing people get wrong about bravery is how long it has to last."

"What do you mean?"

"A dive from that board takes twelve seconds," Maria said. "From the moment you leave the board to the moment you surface. Twelve seconds, start to finish."

Sam looked at the board.

"You don't have to be brave forever," Maria said. "You don't have to be brave for the rest of the lesson, or the rest of the week. You only have to be brave for twelve seconds."

Sam was quiet for a moment.

"Twelve seconds," he said.

"That's it. Anyone can do twelve seconds of anything."

He climbed the ladder for the fifth time.

His hands gripped the rails. His feet found the steps. He counted them without meaning to — seven steps to the top.

He walked to the end of the board.

He looked down.

The blue water looked very far away. The chlorine smell was sharp. Around the pool, other children were swimming and splashing, but up here it was quieter — just the board's slight bounce under his feet and the sound of his own heart.

Twelve seconds.

He looked at his feet at the end of the board. His toes curled over the edge.

He thought about the moment between — the nothing-under-you moment he was afraid of.

He thought: That moment is part of the twelve seconds. It goes away.

He took one breath. Two.

He jumped.

The twelve seconds went like this:

One, two: the air. His stomach dropped. The nothing-under-you moment — here, and then gone, just like that, just like he'd thought.

Three, four: falling. Faster than he expected. The water rushing up.

Five: the surface. COLD — sharp and total and completely surrounding. Green-blue everywhere.

Six, seven, eight: sinking into the quiet. The underwater world — muffled, peaceful, slow. He had been here a thousand times. He knew this place.

Nine, ten: turning. His feet finding the bottom, pushing up.

Eleven: rising. The light brightening above him.

Twelve: the surface. Air. Noise. The pool around him, real and ordinary.

He had done it.

He treaded water for a moment, breathing, looking up at the board above him — empty now, just a board, three metres of metal, ordinary as anything.

Maria was crouching at the pool's edge, watching.

He swam to the edge.

"Twelve seconds?" she said.

"Twelve seconds," he said.

She offered her hand and pulled him up.

"Again?" she said.

Sam looked at the ladder. He looked at the board.

He thought about twelve seconds. Just twelve. Anyone could do twelve.

"Again," he said.

He did it six more times before the end of the lesson.

By the sixth time, he had stopped counting the seconds. He didn't need to count anymore.

But he kept the twelve-seconds idea in his pocket, the way you keep a useful tool even when you're not currently using it. He kept it for other things — the first day of a new school year, the moment before a difficult conversation, the top of any ladder with anything unknown at the bottom.

Anyone can do twelve seconds of anything.

He was sure of it now.

The End.